Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Monday 30 April 2018
What the Australian Government didn’t want the UN to publish
During Nationals MP for New England Barnaby Joyce’s
disastrous sojourn as Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for
Agriculture and Water Resources the federal government began a successfull campaign
to have the United Nations delete
all criticism of Australia’s $13bn effort to restore the ailing Murray-Darling
river system from a published study.
It seems the Turnbull Government did not want the
world to know, or Australian voters to be reminded, that it had placed long
term water sustainability in four of its eight states and territories in jeopardy.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United
Nations draft report in question was the following:
C.J. Perry and Pasquale
Steduto, (25 May 2017), DOES IMPROVED IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY SAVE
WATER? A review of the evidence: Discussion paper on irrigation
and sustainable water
resources management in the
Near East and North Africa
Abstract
The
Near East and North Africa (NENA) Region has the lowest per-capita fresh water
resource availability among all Regions of the world. Already naturally exposed
to chronic shortage of water, NENA will face severe intensification of water
scarcity in the coming decades due to several drivers related to demography,
food security policies, overall socio-economic development and climate change.
Irrigated agriculture in the Region, which already consumes more than 85
percent of renewable fresh water resources, will face strong challenges in
meeting augmented national food demand and supporting economic development in
rural areas. Countries of the NENA Region promote efficient and productive
irrigation as well as the protection and sustainable management of scarce and
fragile natural resources, particularly water, in their national plans. Through
the Regional Initiative on Water Scarcity, FAO is providing support and focus
to efforts in confronting the fast-widening gap between availability and demand
for fresh water resources. A key question to address is: how can countries
simultaneously reduce this gap, promote sustainable water resources management
and contribute effectively to food security and enhanced nutrition? The
traditional assumption has been that increasing irrigation efficiency through
the adoption of modern technologies, like drip irrigation, leads to substantial
water savings, releasing the saved water to the environment or to other uses.
The evidence from research and field measurements shows that this is not the
case. The benefit at the local “on-farm” scale may appear dramatic, but when
properly accounted at basin scale, total water consumption by irrigation tends
to increase instead of decreasing. The potential to increase water
productivity— more “crop per drop”—is also quite modest for the most important
crops. These findings suggest that reductions in water consumption by irrigated
agriculture will not come from the technology itself. Rather, measures like
limiting water allocation will be needed to ensure a sustainable level of water
use. The present report provides the evidence needed to open up a discussion
with all major stakeholders dealing with water resources management on the
proper and scientifically sound framework required to address jointly water
scarcity, sustainability and food security problems. A discussion that has been
disregarded for too long.
C.J.
Perry stated at Research
Gate on 25 April 2018 that:
Government representatives from the Australian Embassy in Rome disagreed
with the research findings for the Australia section summarised in the original
report. FAO, in response, welcomed the opportunity to improve the report.
Dissemination was put on hold and the report was removed from the FAO website
pending inclusion of additional material relevant to the Australian section. In a series of exchanges, no empirical evidence was presented to support
the Australian authorities’ claim that the investment program in the Murray
Darling Basin has generated substantial water savings and environmental
benefits. This left the global principles
and conclusions set out in the original report unchallenged, while the results
from Australia remained contentious. Therefore, it was decided that the best
solution to the matter was to withdraw the Australian section from the
publication and let the Discussion Paper to be available again on the web. The
original and current versions of the report both invite submissions of additional
case studies, information and analysis to WSI@fao.org. Cases documenting technical or policy interventions
where irrigation water has been released to environmental or other uses will be
particularly valuable.
The
suppressed section in the original draft of this UN report would have been
identical or very similar to this version of the text:
4.1 AUSTRALIA
Document(s)
System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water)
(United Nations Statistics Division, 2012); Water Account Australia 2004–05,
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006); Droughtand the rebound effect: A
Murray–Darling basin example (Loch and Adamson, 2015); Understanding irrigation
water use efficiency at different scales for better policy reform: A case study
of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia (Qureshi et al., 2011); Water Reform and
Planning in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia (Grafton, 2017)
…………………………………...........................................................................................
Context
Australia
has led the world in the introduction of water rights in a context of extreme
resource variability.
This in turn
has provided the basis for managed trading between sectors and locations, and
valuable lessons regarding potential problems as previously under-utilized entitlements
are sold and used, and of “stranded assets” if significant volumes of water are
traded out of an area. More recently, evidence suggests that subsidy programmes
to “save” water seem to have been ineffective, poorly conceived and
un-prioritized.
…………………………………...........................................................................................
Highlights
The Murray
Darling Basin (MDB) is widely recognized for its advanced standards in water
resources management—in particular the system of tradable water rights that
allows transfer of water on short term or permanent leases subject to
evaluation of third party impacts by the regulatory authorities.
Australia
participated in the formulation of the United Nations (UN) System of
Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water. This framework accounts for water
withdrawn from “the environment” (rivers, aquifers), use of that water in
various sectors, including transfer between sectors (for example a water utility
supplying a factory or town), consumption through ET, and direct and indirect
return flows to the environment and to sinks. Trial implementation of the
framework was planned in Australia, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics had
already in 2006 issued guidelines referencing the System of Environmental-Economic
Accounting for Water (UN- System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for
Water
(SEEAW) system), which was to be applied to the reporting of the 2004-5
national water accounts.
However, the
following statement from the introduction to Chapter 4 of the 2004-5 National
Water Accounts for Australia5 is apparently at variance with one critical
element of the SEEAW approach—namely the distinction between consumptive and
non-consumptive uses:
This chapter examines the use of water within the AGRICULTURE industry
in Australia. Water used by this industry includes livestock drinking water and
water applied through irrigation to crops and pastures. Since the AGRICULTURE
industry does not use water in-stream, or supply water to other users, total
water use is equal to water consumption.
Elsewhere in
the Accounting Standards it is stated that:
It is believed that leakage to landscape from surface water resources
such as rivers and storages occurs in the MDB region; however, reliable volumes
are not available, and currently there is no suitable quantification approach
to estimate these volumes.
Does this
assumption of zero return flows matter? Indeed it does: Australia is now
embarked on a massive (AUS$ 10bn) programme to save water for the environment,
including subsidies to farmers for hi-tech on farm investment. Savings are
estimated on the basis of typical application efficiencies (e.g. flood irrigation
50 percent, drip 90 percent), so a farmer with a water entitlement of 100 water
units, switching from flood to drip would be assumed to consume 50 units at
present, which would require a delivery of only 50/0.9 (55.5) units after
conversion. The “saving” of 44.5 units are then divided between the farmer and
the environment. Of the 22.25 units going to the farmer, he consumes (with the
new technology) approximately extra 20 units. So on-farm water consumption is
expected to increase from 50 units to 70
units (and return flows are diminished by approximately the same amount), in
apparent direct contradiction to the programme objectives. In some cases, such
return flows will be non-recoverable outflows to saline groundwater; in other
cases, where irrigation is close to rivers or where groundwater is usable, the
return flows are recoverable and cannot be counted as “savings”. However, the
current evaluation of investments includes no apparent basis for assessing whether
subsidized introduction of hi-tech systems will actually release water to
alternative uses, or simply increase consumption by the extra amount allocated
to the farmer. A more comprehensive implementation of UN-SEEAW—where return
flows to the environment are specifically accounted for—would have addressed
this problem.
Other
authors have identified the issue. Qureshi et al. (2011) point to the problem
of ignoring return flows, and the danger of focussing on local “efficiency”,
while Loch and Adamson (2015) go on to identify the “rebound effect” whereby
when water deliveries to the farm are more valuable, the demand for water
actually increases.
Most
recently, writing in a Special Issue of Water Economics and Policy that
addressed many of the complexities of managing water scarcity in the Murray
Darling basin, Grafton (2017) made the following key observations regarding the
Australian experience with providing subsidies for on-farm improvements in
irrigation technology:
* About USD 2.5 billion of taxpayers’ funds used for improving farm irrigation
has primarily benefitted private individuals;
* These investments have had no discernible impact in terms of reduced
water use on a per-hectare basis, or release of water to alternative users;
* The buyback of water rights from willing sellers was the most effective
use of taxpayer funds to release water to alternative uses;
* Investments in irrigation to raise “crop-per-drop” productivity
had failed to deliver water savings on a basin scale.
NOTE: Full draft report Does
improved irrigation technology save water.pdf
Saturday 28 April 2018
Quotes of the Week
“He’s nothing but a pre-Fitzgerald corruption inquiry Queensland
walloper” [An anonymous Liberal MP speaking of
Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton, quoted in The
Saturday Paper by journalist Paul
Bongiorno, 21 April 2018]
“At the same time, returns to the AEC show that these same corporations paid a total of $21,733,192 in political donations to political parties with Westpac standing out with donations totalling of nearly $12 million during the 2014-15 financial year alone.“ [Campaigner Rosie Williams, in “What
can open data tell us about Australia’s major banks?”, 20 April 2018]
“The Liberals
complaining that ASIC is sleep is rich considering who administered the fucking
anaesthetic.” [Journalist Richard Chirgwin, Twitter,
23 April 2018]
Labels:
banks and bankers,
corruption,
right wing politics
Saturday 21 April 2018
Miranda's IPA inspired rant
This was the News Corp mouthpiece for that far-right pressure group the Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA), Miranda Devine,
in full rant (though sticking closely to IPA's wish list) and under multiple mastheads on 18 April
2018:
Malcolm Turnbull has a
rare opportunity to put a stop to the Left’s long march when the Race
Discrimination Commissioner’s term expires in August
Race Discrimination
Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane’s term expires in August and the Turnbull
government cannot afford to miss this opportunity to stake out its ground in
the culture wars.
Conservatives are sick
of Coalition governments that appease the Left, curl into a ball and try not
to cause outrage while Labor-Green governments remake the culture in their own
image.
The country always takes
two steps to the Left with a Labor government and not much better than one step
to the Right or even staying in place with the Coalition, which puts us on a very
bad trajectory indeed…..
So government gets
bigger and more intrusive, the ABC continues unimpeded, destructive quangos
such as the Australian Human Rights Commission proliferate and the cancer of
identity politics takes hold. Little by little, our remarkable nation is
transformed, and division takes root. The self-reliance and entrepreneurial
spirit of Australians is sapped and the bonds of mateship are eroded.
But it doesn’t have to
be that way.
The only way to arrest
this dispiriting drift to the left is for Coalition governments to stop
pretending there are no culture wars and get into the trenches and fight.
With a one-seat
majority, a prime minister with fashionably progressive views and an election
in the next year, we can’t expect bold actions by the Turnbull government that
were beyond the Howard and Abbott governments. Such as closing down the Human
Rights Commission.
But Malcolm Turnbull
cannot afford to keep making mistakes like he did at the ABC when he appointed
as chairman a man who is such a leftie he said he couldn’t see any bias.
The symbolic value
cannot be over-estimated of replacing Soutphommasane with a commissioner who
doesn’t want to use race to divide us.
That’s all this pesky
36-year-old French-born son of Laotian refugees has done since he was appointed
to a five-year term by Kevin Rudd in 2013, a month before the Abbott government
was elected. Despite the fact Australia gave Soutphommasane’s family a home, a
free education at Hursltone Agricultural High and the University of Sydney, and
a Commonwealth scholarship to Oxford University, he preaches that this is a
racist country.
Despite the fact this is
the most successful immigrant country in the world, which has mostly
harmoniously absorbed as many as 200,000 new people each year from around the
world, Soutphommasane tells us that the culture is toxic.
The former freelance
journalist has bought the identity politics agenda, hook, line and sinker. He
saw the great honours bestowed on him, such as membership of the board of the
National Australia Day Council and the $340,000 gig at the Australian Human
Rights Commission, as proof, not that this was a country that offered equality
of opportunity to all comers, regardless of the colour of their skin. No, he
saw it as more evidence of anti-white racism that needed to be set straight
with social engineering.
He will never be
forgiven for soliciting racial complaints against a cartoon by the late and
much missed Bill Leak, whose persecution under Section 18C of the Racial
Discrimination Act only really ended with his untimely death last year of a
heart attack at 61.
Soutphommasane’s latest
obsession is to impose ethnic diversity quotas on corporate Australia. He
declared last year that there were too many white people running Australian
companies.
In his five years he has
just libelled Australia, created race-based social divisions and helped fuel a
backlash against immigration.
So it’s not good enough
for the government to appoint, as is mooted, an innocuous replacement who just
avoids the headlines. Restitution is needed. If we must have a racial
commissioner, then let it be a clear-eyed patriot who loves this country. Warren
Mundine is the best person for the job. Well-respected, brimming with common
sense and optimism, he has a proven track record as a businessman, and as an
Aboriginal and political leader. He would unite us around what’s best about
Australia.
This was a restrained Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane in rebuttal the following day:
Thursday 12 April 2018
The only Australians who do not recognise the cruel farce that is 'robo-debt' are right-wing politicians, ideologues and the just plain ignorant
“It is trite
maths that statistical averages (whether means or medians) tell nothing about
the variability or otherwise of the underlying numbers from which averages are
calculated. Only if those underlying numbers do not vary at all is it possible
to extrapolate from the average a figure for any one of the component periods
to which the average relates. Otherwise the true underlying pattern may be as
diverse as the experience of Australia’s highly variable drought/flood pattern
in the face of knowledge of ‘average’ yearly rainfall figures. Yet precisely
such a mathematical fault lies at the heart of the introduction from July 2016
of the OCI machine-learning method for raising and recovering social security
overpayment debts. This extrapolates Australian Taxation Office (‘ATO’) data
matching information about the total amount and period over which employment
income was earned, and applies that average to each and every separate
fortnightly rate calculation period for working-age payments.” [Terry
Carney AO, UNSW Law Journal, Vol 42 No 2, THE NEW
DIGITAL FUTURE FOR WELFARE: DEBTS WITHOUT LEGAL PROOFS OR MORAL AUTHORITY?,
p2]
The
Canberra Times,
5 April 2018:
The Coalition
government's "robo-debt" program has been unlawfully raising debts
with welfare recipients, wreaking "legal and moral injustice", a
former administrative appeals tribunal member has said.
Emeritus professor of
law at the University of Sydney Terry Carney, who was on the Administrative
Appeals Tribunal for 40 years and was its longest serving member until
finishing in September, has weighed into the debate over the controversial debt
collection method saying the Department of Human Services has no legal basis to
raise debts when a client fails to ‘disprove’ they owe money.
While Professor Carney
urged it be made to comply with the law, the DHS rejected his comments, saying
its Online Compliance Intervention program was consistent with legislation.
"Robo-debt" -
the subject of a Commonwealth Ombudsman report and a Senate inquiry recommending sweeping reforms to the
program - was at the centre of a maelstrom of controversy last year and remains
loathed by critics calling for change….
Writing in the UNSW Law
Journal last
month, he said that despite the DHS' stance it remained responsible for
calculating debts based on actual earnings, not assumed averages.
“Centrelink’s
OCI radically changed the way overpayment debts are raised by purporting to absolve Centrelink from its
legal obligation to obtain sufficient information to found a debt in the event
that its ‘first instance’ contact with
the recipient is unable to unearth information about actual fortnightly earnings.
As noted by the Ombudsman, the major change was that Centrelink would ‘no
longer’ exercise its statutory powers to obtain wage records and that the
‘responsibility’ to obtain such information now lies with applicants seeking to
challenge a debt. Writing a little later, the Senate Community Affairs
References Committee challenged this, contending that
6.13 It is a basic legal principle that in order to
claim a debt, a debt must be proven to be owed. The onus of proving a debt must
remain with the department. This would include verifying income data in order
to calculate a debt. Where appropriate, verification can be done with the
assistance of income support payment recipients, but the final responsibility
must lie with the department. This would also preclude the practice of
averaging income data to manufacture a fortnightly income for the purposes of
retrospectively calculating a debt. …” [Terry Carney AO, UNSW Law Journal, Vol
42 No 2, THE NEW
DIGITAL FUTURE FOR WELFARE: DEBTS WITHOUT LEGAL PROOFS OR MORAL AUTHORITY?,
pp3-4]
Sunday 8 April 2018
Is the U.S. becoming a country hostile to Australian tourists?
According to
the Australian Bureau of
Statistics there were 13.7 million internet subscribers in Australia at
the end of June 2017 and a 2016
Deloitte survey found that 84% of Australians had a smart phone.
An est. 20
million Australians use
a social media platform like Facebook,
Instragram or Twitter
via a desktop computer or mobile phone.
Because we
are one of the most digitally connected populations in the world the United
States is about to pose an additional risk to our personal Internet privacy and
safety if we seek any form of visa entry into that country.
ABC
News, 31
March 2018:
A US federal government
proposal to collect social media identities of nearly everyone who seeks entry
into the country has been described as a "chilling" encroachment on
freedom of speech and association.
The State Department
filed a proposal which would require most immigrant and non-immigrant visa
applicants to list all social media identities they have used in the past five
years, as well as previously used telephone numbers, email addresses and their
international travel history over the same period.
The information would be
used to vet and identify them, which would affect about 14.7 million people
annually.
The proposal goes
further than rules instituted last May. Those changes instructed consular
officials to collect social media identities only when they determined
"that such information is required to confirm identity or conduct more
rigorous national security vetting," a State Department official said at
the time.
The proposal requires
approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but it supports
President Donald Trump's campaign promise to institute "extreme
vetting" of foreigners entering the US to prevent terrorism.
The American Civil
Liberties Union expressed concern, saying the move would have a
"chilling" effect on freedom of speech and association.
"People will now
have to wonder if what they say online will be misconstrued or misunderstood by
a government official," Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU's National Security
Project, said in a statement.
"We're also
concerned about how the Trump administration defines the vague and over-broad
term a 'terrorist activities' because it is inherently political and can be
used to discriminate against immigrants who have done nothing wrong.
Australian public opinion was changing on the subject of US-Australia relations before this latest Trump Regime move against digital privacy - it began to shift after Donald Trump was elected US president......
Australian public opinion was changing on the subject of US-Australia relations before this latest Trump Regime move against digital privacy - it began to shift after Donald Trump was elected US president......
ABC
News, January
2018:
Recent polling by the United States Studies Centre
(USSC) and YouGov — surveying both Australians and Americans — gives
mixed grades on American strength after the first year of Mr Trump's
presidency. Perceptions of American strength and international security are
closely linked for large portions of the publics in both countries — with some
interesting exceptions. Our data suggest that many see the world as more
dangerous precisely because the United States is perceived to be weaker under
Mr Trump.
Almost half of Australians report that the United
States has grown weaker over the past 12 months.
Only 19 per cent of
Australians think America has grown stronger over the first year of the Trump
presidency.
Americans are less dour
in their assessments, with 36 per cent saying that the United States has become
weaker over the last year. "Weaker" leads "stronger"
by 27 points in the Australian data, but this difference is just six points
among Americans….
Does a stronger (or
weaker) America under Mr Trump affect assessments of Australia's security? It's
complicated. In the aggregate, Australians associate a stronger America with a
safer world and a safer United States, but this does not extend to assessments of
Australian security.
More than half of
Coalition voters say Australia faces more danger than a few years ago,
irrespective of assessments of American power under Mr Trump. Labor voters and
minor party supporters do associate a weaker America with a less secure
Australia.
For Greens voters — at
best sceptical about the US-Australia relationship — a weaker America makes for
a safer Australia. Most Greens voters report that America is weaker under Mr
Trump and just 32 per cent of those see heightened dangers for Australia over the
last few years; among Greens seeing America as stronger under Mr Trump, half
report things becoming more dangerous for Australia, although the small number
of Greens in our data prevent firm conclusions.
Historically, a robust,
bipartisan consensus has seen little partisanship in Australian public opinion
on the value of Australia's relationship with the United States. Our data
suggest that this equilibrium is under some stress. References to Mr Trump
activate partisan differences in Australian thinking about the United
States. While Australians (like Americans) associate increases in American
power with a safer world, a perceived link with enhanced Australian security is
weak at best (and probably inverted for Greens voters).
On the other hand,
despite large partisan divisions, Americans continue to associate American
strength with increased security for America's allies.
This proposition has
been the bedrock of Australian foreign policy and defence thinking for decades,
and remains so, Mr Trump notwithstanding. Accordingly, our data allows us to
restate the challenge for the current generation of Australian policy makers
and political leaders: articulating the value and relevance of the US
relationship to an Australian public at best unsure about the direction of the
United States under Mr Trump and the implications for Australia's security and
prosperity.
Thursday 5 April 2018
Liberals continue to behave badly in 2018 - Part Three
This time it was not Liberal politicians in federal government but Victorian Liberals on the state opposition benches who were behaving badly.......
The Age, 30 March 2018:
The Victorian opposition
has broken a promise and reneged on long-standing parliamentary custom by
breaking its ‘‘pairing’’ to vote down the Andrews government's controversial
fire service reorganisation bill.
Government and
crossbenchers in Parliament’s Upper House were in uproar after two Liberal
members who had told Labor they could not vote or be present because of their
religious beliefs suddenly arrived to vote on Good Friday morning.
‘This is ball tampering
of the highest order,’’ said crossbencher Fiona Patten from the Reason Party.
She said the Coalition’s
conduct would make it very difficult for her and others in minority parties to
have a working relationship with the Opposition.
The controversy erupted
after a marathon sitting over the government’s bid to restructure the fire
services.
This is the first time
the upper house has ever sat on Good Friday.
Around midnight, Ms
Patten said that Liberal MP Bernie Finn had told the house he could not work on
Good Friday. At the same time, Craig Ondarchie also indicated he was not going
to be in Parliament House for similar reasons. One Labor MP said Mr Ondarchie
had been acting like he was ‘‘holding a prayer vigil’’.
Mr Finn on Thursday
night had told Parliament, in a debate about Labor pressing on with its
legislation despite it being Easter: ‘‘I have long believed in: you do not work
on Good Friday — any other day of the year. That is the rule. Even when my
birthday falls on Good Friday, I do not celebrate it on Good Friday.’’
In a similar vein, and
at about the same time, Mr Ondarchie said: "Today is the day that Jesus
died. It is a very important day. Today I want to be with my church family. I
want to take up your offer, as do some of my colleagues, about accepting the
pair that you have offered."
A ‘‘pairing’’ is an
unofficial agreement from both sides of politics that, when an MP is unable to
attend a vote, allows an MP from the opposing side to also miss the vote, so
numbers remain matched.
The government granted
the pairs requested by the opposition and Labor ministers Philip Dalidakis and
Jaala Pulford, the deputy leader in the upper house, excused themselves from
the vote and went home.
Mr Dalidakis, assuming
he had a pair, travelled to Sydney on Friday morning.
But when the vote
occurred just after 11am, Mr Ondarchie and Mr Finn returned to the chamber.
After Mr Finn and Mr
Ondarchie’s return to Parliament, Labor’s bill was defeated 19-18.
Labor Upper House MP
Cesar Melham said the pair were dishonourable and ‘‘should hang their head in
shame’’.
Ms Patten said that when
the Mr Ondarchie and Mr Finn came back into the chamber they could not look
anyone in the eye.
Labor's upper house
leader, Gavin Jennings, said the government ‘‘had generously offered those
pairs because we had members praying in the parliament last night to be with
their families and be with their church communities on the most holy day on the
Christian calendar’’.
‘‘And those people who
prayed in front of us and begged us to let them go, returned after we had given
them a pair – right at the death knell, was when they returned, to betray
parliamentary convention.’’……
The hypocritical antics of Messrs. Craig Philip Ondarchie and Bernard Thomas C. Finn as set out in the Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council Daily Hansard:
09:55am Thursday 29 April 2018
Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern
Metropolitan) (09:55) — As John 3:16 teaches us:
For
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Today is Maundy
Thursday, tomorrow is Good Friday and it is the most solemn day of the
Christian year. It is the day our saviour died for us. It is the day we were
redeemed from our sins by the voluntary death of God himself at the hands of
man. On Good Friday, according to the gospels, Jesus was taken before Pilate in
the morning, sent to Herod, returned to Pilate, was mocked and beaten, saw
Barabbas released in his stead, was crowned with thorns, was condemned to
death, carried the crushing burden of the cross, told the weeping women what
would happen in his future, was crucified between two thieves and forgave those
who crucified him. As Luke 23:34 tells us, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know
not what they do’, and he cried out and died. It is the most solemn day of the
Christian calendar.
I close my contribution
in prayer:
Jesus,
Today we pause to remember your sacrificial love
That
shone light into the darkness
That
bore life from such emptiness
That
revealed hope out of devastation
That
spoke truth through incrimination
That
released freedom in spite of imprisonment
And
brought us forgiveness instead of punishment.
Thank
you that we can now walk in the light of your life, Hope, truth, freedom and
forgiveness, This day and everyday. Amen.
Approx.
23:12pm Thursday 29 April 2018
Mr ONDARCHIE — Members,
the blackness that hangs over my head tonight is associated with the passing of
my Lord and Saviour on this evening. At this very time on the first Good Friday
Jesus had been arrested and taken before the high priests Annas and Caiaphas
and it was during this time that Peter denied him. I think this place is not
about being tactical for me, Mr Jennings; it is about respect. It is about
respect for —
00:15am
Friday 30 March 2018
Mr ONDARCHIE — I move:
That the committee now report progress. In doing so I alert the house to the
fact that we are now officially in Good Friday. I have made my point very
clear. I do look to get some confirmation from the minister at the table,
Minister Jennings, and the other minister who made an offer to members of the
house that anybody who wants a pair can have a pair. This is a very religious
day for me. You heard me talk about that –
00:20am
Friday 30 March 2018
Mr FINN — I very
strongly support the motion moved by Mr Ondarchie, and I have to say to you I
have been sitting here since midnight and I feel quite ill, physically ill, to
be sitting here on Good Friday when I know that I should not work on Good
Friday, that this is a day of extreme solemnity; it is a very sacred day. I
know there are some members on the government side who do not understand those
of us of faith, but the fact of the matter is that it is beyond the realms of
decency to force people to work, to breach their religious rights, as we have
seen. I know there are members of the government who do not actually believe in
freedom of religion — and they are showing that just at the minute. I heard Mr
Jennings say that every one of us who asked for a pair would get one. Now, I
want a pair because merely being here, as I say, is making me feel ill when I
know I should be elsewhere. I want a pair; Mr Ondarchie has said he wants a
pair. I would be very, very keen for Mr Jennings to get to his feet and clarify
if the offer still stands for each and every member, as he said, who wants a
pair to be given a pair. That is something that I think he has got to do,
because he said it. I mean, we didn’t ask for it; he offered it, and it is only
reasonable that he now clarify the situation, given that there is some
significant confusion as to whether that offer was genuine. He is either fair
dinkum or he is not fair dinkum. If he is fair dinkum, then we can get on with
it. If he is not fair dinkum, we know that he can’t be trusted and we move on
from that in my members statement today. You heard me talk about it when we
broached this subject an hour or a bit more ago. This is the day that my Lord
was crucified. I do not want to be here. I want to be with my family and I want
to be with my church family. I find it highly disrespectful that on this very
important day in my faith’s calendar we are still here. I think it appropriate,
Minister, that with respect, selfishly, to me and to others who understand the
importance of this day today we stop this now. We can come back to this. It is
not time critical. I note that in your motion this morning on the rising of the
house that we are going to reconvene early in May. We can come back and do this
then. Today is the day that Jesus died. It is a very important day. Today I
want to be with my church family. I want to take up your offer, as do some of
my colleagues, about accepting the pair that you have offered. This is not acceptable.
Those with long memories will recall that Coalition MPs and senators have a history of attempting to distort parliamentary processes. The Night of the Long Prawns during a federal parliamentary sitting in 1974, the refusal of NSW Premier Tom Lewis in 1975 and Qld Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen also in 1975 to follow parliamentary convention and accept a nominee put forward by a political party to fill a casual vacancy in a seat which to that point in time had been held by that same party, are just three examples.
Thursday 29 March 2018
Mainstream media continues to amplify racist dog whistles in 2018
In September
2017 the Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia (NMBA) published the new Code of Conduct for Nurses and Code of
Conduct for Midwives. The codes took effect for all nurses and midwives in
Australia on 1 March 2018.
These codes
set out the
legal requirements, professional behaviour and conduct expectations for all
nurses and midwives in all practice settings.
The new codes
for nurses and midwives can be found here.
These codes
passed without much comment until far-right Senator Cory Bernardi began to bay about “political correctness” on
31 January 2018 and claim that Nurses must acknowledge
white privilege and voice this acknowledgment if asked.
According to
ABC Media Watch
he was followed by the Murdoch media running with this blatant dog whistle,
followed by Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and various radio shock
jocks.
Misleading
media coverage culminating in a truly appalling piece of journalism by Channel
7 which elicited this response…………..
Luke Pearson writing at @IndigenousX on 24 March
2018:
“BUT FIRST TONIGHT, THE
CONTENTIOUS NEW CODE TELLING NURSES TO SAY ‘SORRY FOR BEING WHITE’ WHEN
TREATING THEIR INDIGENOUS PATIENTS..
That’s how Today Tonight Adelaide
began last night.
Catch Up: Having to apologise for being white – the controversial new code for nurses treating Indigenous Australians. #TTAdelaide pic.twitter.com/yViiqkw67F— TodayTonightAdelaide (@TodayTonightSA) March 23, 2018
It continued:
“Now, it’s the latest in a string of
politically correct changes for the health industry, but this one has led to
calls for the Nursing Board boss to resign.”
It was followed by a five minute story
with the new code being condemned by someone you’ve probably never heard
of, Graeme Haycroft,
explaining that: “According to how the code is written, the white nurse would
come in and say, ‘before I deal with you, I have to acknowledge to you that I
have certain privileges that you don’t have” followed by Cory Bernardi calling
it divisive.
It goes on in this vein for a full
five minutes before it cuts back to the presenter, who finally says, “The
Nursing and Midwifery Board has told us that the code was drafted in
consultation with Aboriginal groups and has been taken out of context as it’s
not a requirement for health workers to declare or apologise for white
privilege”.
And just to reinforce that point, the
entire premise for the segment was false. There is no requirement for nurses to
apologise for being white, which would be very awkward for the more the more
than 1500 Indigenous nurses across Australia, and the countless others who also
aren’t white to begin with. But, even for the nurses who are – THERE IS NO
REQUIREMENT FOR THEM TO APOLOGISE FOR BEING WHITE.
So, why on Earth would Today Tonight
run such a story?
Why would they base a story off the
demonstrably false allegations of this Graeme Haycroft person?
To answer that, it might useful to cut
back to a 2005
Sydney Morning Herald story about Mr Haycroft:
“A member of the National Party and
the H.R. Nicholls Society, he (Mr Haycroft) boasts that, because of a tussle he
had with the Australian Workers Union 15 years ago, the union does not have a
single member shearing sheep in south-western Queensland today.
Now he runs a labour hire firm with a
thriving sideline in moving small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.
…Mr Haycroft’s business stands out
because he is targeting lower-skilled, lower-paid workers, often with poor
English – the people unions say have much to fear from individual contracts.”
Cut back to 2018, and Graeme Haycroft
now runs the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, which promotes
itself as an alternative to the Qld Nurses Union.
So, a man with a long history of
fighting Unions, who ‘saved’ the mushroom farming business by showing
businesses how to move “small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.”
According to the 2005 article, “Mr
Haycroft said workers had been more than happy to sign on, most with their
penalty rates, holiday pay and other conditions being rolled into a flat rate.”
“However, [there is always a
‘however’], Mr Haycroft was stripped of his preferred provider status with the
Office of the Employment Advocate on Thursday, after a Sydney picker, Carmen
Walacz Vel Walewska, said she was sacked after she contacted the Australian
Workers Union for advice on AWAs.”
With that track record, it’s hard to
imagine why nurses would want to leave their current union in favour of his
‘professional association’.
It seems as though, once again,
Indigenous people have become a political football and a convenient scapegoat
for issues that have nothing to do with us.
Queensland has a long history of
political success found through anti-Aboriginal sentiment, so what better way
to undermine a Union and recruit new members to a professional association than
to accuse the Union of ‘racism against white people’ and ‘political correctness
gone made’ by spreading the blatantly false and misleading accusation that
white nurses now have to apologise to Aboriginal people for being white?
And just like Dick Smith’s
anti-immigration campaign, Blair Cottrell’s anti-African ‘community safety
group’, and Prue McSween’s call for a new Stolen Generation, it seems Channel 7
is always more than happy to ignore the facts and sensationalise issues about race
and racism.
There is always one more
thing.
We, and others, will soon publish
articles explaining what the Code of Conduct actually calls for, and explain
why cultural competence and cultural safety are important (editor’s note: we
did, here’s
one of them), but I can’t help but be reminded of this quote from Toni
Morrison:
“The function, the very serious
function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps
you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you
have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says
your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that
it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you
have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will
always be one more thing.”
So, instead of working on the very
real business of ensuring best practice within the nursing industry, our
Indigenous experts in this area will have to take a few days away from this
important work to explain that no one is asking for white nurses to apologise
for being white.
Just like we have to explain that not
all Aboriginal parents abuse their children, or that we don’t want to steal
white people’s backyards, or that we had (and have) science, or that Australia
wasn’t Terra Nullius, or, as Malcolm Turnbull suggested last year, that
acknowledging Indigenous history and addressing the issue of colonial statues
and place names across Australia is not a “Stalinist exercise of trying to wipe
out or obliterate or blank out parts of our history”.
So long as Australian media and
politics finds value, profit and opportunity in promoting racism, there will
always be one more thing.
So, I might as well clear up a few
others while I’m here, and empty a few more buckets out of the endless ocean of
racist misinformation.
Child abuse isn’t a ‘cultural’ thing.
Police are not scared to arrest
Aboriginal people out of fear of being called racist.
We don’t get free houses.
Aboriginal people using white ochre on
their faces in dance and ceremony is not the same thing as white people
dressing up in blackface.
We don’t get free university.
The Voice to Parliament is not a third
chamber of parliament.
We are not the problem.
Anything else?
We aren’t vampires?
We don’t shoot laser beams out of our
eyes?
We aren’t secretly developing a
perpetual motion machine that runs on white tears?
I’m sure I, and countless others, will
undoubtedly need to keep adding to this list because, as Toni Morrison tells
us, there will always be one more thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do
nurses under the new code have to announce their ‘white privilege’ before
treating indigenous patients?
It is not a requirement of the codes of conduct for nurses and midwives
to announce or apologise for white privilege. Any claim that nurses and
midwives need to announce or apologise for white privilege is completely
untrue. The recent criticisms from Mr Haycroft are based on completely untrue
statements. The requirements for nurses when working with Aboriginal and/or
Torres Strait Islander Peoples are clearly outlined in section 3.1 of the code.
Are nurses encouraged to
announce their ‘white privilege’ before treating indigenous patients?
No.
Is there any requirement
to acknowledge or announce ‘white privilege’ before treating a patient?
No.
Can a nurse be sacked
for NOT declaring or addressing their ‘white privilege’ to a patient?
No.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUSTRALIAN NURSING AND MIDWIFERY
FEDERATION, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF NURSING, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF MIDWIVES AND
CONGRESS OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER NURSES AND MIDWIVES
JOINT
STATEMENT, 23 March
2018:
In response to Graeme Haycroft’s recent
comments, we welcome the opportunity to provide further information on how
important cultural safety is for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
It is clear from the 2018 Closing the Gap
Report tabled by Prime Minister Turnbull in February 2018 that Aboriginal
and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples still experience poorer health outcomes
than non-Indigenous Australians. It is well understood these inequities are a
result of the colonisation process and the many discriminatory policies to
which Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians were subjected to,
and the ongoing experience of discrimination today.
All healthcare leaders and health
professionals have a role to play in closing the gap.
The approach the NMBA has taken for
nurses and midwives (the largest workforce in the healthcare system) by setting
expectations around culturally safe practice, reflects the current expectations
of governments to provide a culturally safe health system. (For more
information please see the COAG Health Council 4 August 2017 Communiqué).
Culturally safe and respectful
practice is not a new concept. Nurses and midwives are expected to engage with
all people as individuals in a culturally safe and respectful way, foster open,
honest and compassionate professional relationships, and adhere to their
obligations about privacy and confidentiality.
Many health services already provide
cultural safety training for their staff. Cultural safety is about the person
who is providing care reflecting on their own assumptions and culture in order
to work in a genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Peoples.
Nurses and midwives have always had a
responsibility to provide care that contributes to the best possible outcome
for the person/woman they are caring for. They need to work in partnership with
that person/woman to do so. The principle of cultural safety in the new Code of
conduct for nurses and Code of conduct for midwives (the codes) provides
simple, common sense guidance on how to work in a partnership with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The codes do not require nurses or midwives
to declare or apologise for white privilege.
The guidance around cultural safety in
the codes sets out clearly the behaviours that are expected of nurses and
midwives, and the standard of conduct that patients and their families can
expect. It is vital guidance for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
The codes were developed through an
evidence-based and extensive consultation process conducted over a two-year
period. Their development included literature reviews to ensure they were based
on the best available international and Australian evidence, as well as an analysis
of complaints about the conduct of nurses and midwives to ensure they were
meeting the public’s needs.
The consultation and input from the
public and professions included working groups, focus groups and preliminary
and public consultation. The public consultation phase included a campaign to
encourage nurses and midwives to provide feedback.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery
Federation, the Australian College of Nursing, the Australian College of
Midwives and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and
Midwives all participated in each stage of the development and consultation of
the new codes. The organisations strongly support the guidance around cultural
safety in the codes for nurses and midwives.
Lynette Cusack Chair
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
Ann Kinnear CEO
Australian College of Midwives (ACM)
Kylie Ward CEO
Australian College of Nursing (ACN)
Janine Mohamed CEO
Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives
Annie Butler A/Federal
Secretary Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation
Labels:
health,
media,
racism,
right wing politics
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